I am Trigger's broom

I picture myself, in my head, when picture myself I must, as I was in 1992. Long hair, black t, boots, with Ruby at my side. That is me forever. The mirror comes as a shock.

“Maybe I’ve lost who I was,” is what I said.

You, me, any of us, we have only got so many moving parts, as I see it. Sure, yeah ok, it’s true you’ve got Grandpa down in there, the way he told a joke and the way in which he cocked his head while thinking before he spoke, you took that, but I am not speaking of that. No.

There is my job. My home. My friends. There are the things over which I obsess while walking down the street.

The little men come up from the ground. Diggers, overalled, perhaps brown-skinned once many generations back, forgotten geological history now nearly, the underground has had its way and bleached them to a wormy white. The little men pop off my parts: Jamie, my red Ford Ranger, the Green Party, my love of the music of Of Montreal.

Some of these parts they replace with new parts. Some they hang from hooks on my walls for remembrance. Most they take away with them, back down into their holes, and I am less, fewer parts than before. Over and over and over.

My Buddhist part (1993-1996) would be pleased at this. Would have been pleased at this. That part was an -ism which memorized this: “There is no abiding self.” But that part of me was snapped off and taken underground, perhaps sold by the little worm men at some underground fair. I don’t know how it works.

I am Trigger’s broom:

or you can have it this way:

or you can have it this way:

It is all the same to me yet it is not the same me, really.

[NOTE: It looks to me like the comments on this post are all screwed up. The little arrow thing just goes around and around. I do not know why, and I’m sorry.]